Lainie Duro

thanks for all of the feedback...I'd love to hear more! Just to clarify,
Monk is only going on 4 (12/2), so I'm not incredibly concerned with the
pace of his learning...I was just curious as to what everyone felt about
allowing him to spell things wrong - if it might affect his ability to do it
right later. He HATES being corrected, even when he spews completely
incorrect information about ANYTHING. If I attempt to correct him, he says
"I'm PRETENDING it's spelled that way." And gets rather annoyed with me.
So...I think the idea of just spelling things for him when he's NOT spelling
things himself is a good one. We spent much of yesterday afternoon drawing
and painting and I would give titles to all of his work. It got to the point
where he was so interested in what I was writing that he would put two
splashes of paint on the page, say "look mom, it's another leaf hopper" and
demand that I write letters on the page. He's obviously ready to learn this
stuff, but maybe I need to just relax and let him go at his own pace.

Thanks again...

livelifelove
Lainie

Karen Paulson

Hi Lainie, I also have a son that will be 4 (  Nov 30)  this fall.  He also is coming up with very creative spellings for words.  He is also making up scenarios and stories where he describes himself as a character.  He does this off and on all day.  He hasn't decided to draw pictures of his stories, just verbalizes everything.  Same for the spelling-- all verbalized at this point.  I  think encouragement for what he is doing is appropriate, and I might say, "Would you like to make a book for your story?", but I try  not to focus on correct spelling too much yet.  I think doing so could *spoil* the magic he is experiencing on his own.  ~Karen
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2000 8:50 AM
Subject: Re: [Unschooling-dotcom] Re: Reading/spelling...

thanks for all of the feedback...I'd love to hear more! Just to clarify,
Monk is only going on 4 (12/2), so I'm not incredibly concerned with the
pace of his learning...I was just curious as to what everyone felt about
allowing him to spell things wrong - if it might affect his ability to do it
right later. He HATES being corrected, even when he spews completely
incorrect information about ANYTHING. If I attempt to correct him, he says
"I'm PRETENDING it's spelled that way." And gets rather annoyed with me.
So...I think the idea of just spelling things for him when he's NOT spelling
things himself is a good one. We spent much of yesterday afternoon drawing
and painting and I would give titles to all of his work. It got to the point
where he was so interested in what I was writing that he would put two
splashes of paint on the page, say "look mom, it's another leaf hopper" and
demand that I write letters on the page. He's obviously ready to learn this
stuff, but maybe I need to just relax and let him go at his own pace.

Thanks again...

livelifelove
Lainie

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In a message dated 8/23/2000 6:43:48 AM Central Daylight Time,
hape2day@... writes:

> I would have to agree with Cathie. My son is 5.5yo and he writes his
> name: SOHJUA (Joshua) He knows his name when he sees it he just
> doesn't write it in the correct order. I used to try to correct him
> as well. He would be so disappointed that what I saw was what he did
> wrong that now I just praise him for getting the right letters on the
> paper.


Here's a trick we learned when our son was very small. He'd point to an
elephant, but say DOG. Instead of saying, "No, that's an elephant." We'd
say, "Well, that kind of dog is called an elephant." That way we avoided
outright correction, but got the point accross. With such a short name, Zack
didn't often mix up the letters, but he often wrote the Z and the C
backwards. Instead of saying "Do it this way," I'd say, "This is how I write
those letters." Then I'd show him. We never acted like he was wrong, we
just found a way to model the correct word or letters or whatever.

Carron

[email protected]

In a message dated 8/23/2000 4:53:15 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
lainie@... writes:

> thanks for all of the feedback...I'd love to hear more! Just to clarify,
> Monk is only going on 4 (12/2), so I'm not incredibly concerned with the
> pace of his learning...I was just curious as to what everyone felt about
> allowing him to spell things wrong - if it might affect his ability to do
it
> right later. He HATES being corrected, even when he spews completely
> incorrect information about ANYTHING. If I attempt to correct him, he says
> "I'm PRETENDING it's spelled that way." And gets rather annoyed with me.
> So...I think the idea of just spelling things for him when he's NOT
spelling
> things himself is a good one.

Soon he'll be asking you how to spell words. When that happens it will be
because he wants the information and it will stick longer.

We learned to ignore spelling lessons entirely. Tried to do some at about
age 8, but it wasn't working well. DS was simply not interested. OTOH he is
a perfectionist and really wants it to be right. That meant he wasn't
willing to write anything because he didn't already know how to spell the
words correctly. Led to lots of frustration and he simply was not willing to
do any repetitive spelling exercises. For the last 3+ years I've been
encouraging him to spell the words exactly the way they sound to him. Since
the words look like they sound, it was a piece of cake for me to figure out
what he was writing and he got his thoughts down on paper/computer. His
reading level is quite 'advanced' and he reads constantly, so I was pretty
confident he'd instinctively figure out how to spell. I did teach him to
read phonetically, I'm sure that made a difference to this approach.

In the last year he has started asking me how to spell words when it is
important to him to get it right. Once he gained confidence in my ability to
read what he was writing, it made a huge difference! Now I let him know that
his spelling is improving. He spells most words he uses correctly and asks
for help when he doesn't have a clue. I encourage him to write it as best he
can when I find the occasional word that is spelled incorrectly, I let him
know how it is supposed to be spelled and give him a phonics rule or nemonic
device to help him remember it next time. I don't expect him to correct it.
He often does so on his own, however. We don't do repetitive drills. It
amazes me how well it is working.

As an interesting side note, DH is a college graduate and still spells
horrid. When I would help him edit his term papers the joke went something
like this:

Me: Honey, how do you spell <fill in the blank>?
DH: You know how I spell it, you are looking at it!

Then I'd tell him the rest of the world doesn't spell it that way. LOL

FWIW, it was really hard to let go of the 'need' to 'teach' spelling. I'm
really glad we've taken this approach, though. It has greatly decreased the
stress in our family. The only 'negative' thing is a cousin that likes to
bug DS with claims that DS is stupid because he h'schools. That is
improving. We keep reminding DS and the cousin that people learn different
things at different times and it has nothing to do with intelligence. DS's
confidence has improved as he figures out that there are some things he has
learned/is learning way ahead of the cousin's schedule.

(I'm soooo looking forward to school starting again (NOT!). I'm sure this
cousin will be up to the same stuff. I hear lots of phrases from him that
come directly from the NEA via his ps teacher. Yuck! Just one more reason
to homeschool!)

This got long...sorry.

Eiraul